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Taxes – Bureaucracy at work.

So I just filed taxes for the first time and let me tell you, there is something wrong with the way our country operates things. First off, when did we learn how to fill out taxes in school? Never. So that’s the first issue, not enough education about the things we actually need to know how to do in order to survive in this world.

Next issue, there is not enough easily accessible information out there. When you don’t know something, it is insanely difficult to find the information you’re looking for without already knowing. It is really difficult to establish a direct line of contact. I think there should be a way to have direct email contact or something of that sort with someone in the IRS that can answer questions and guide you through things. There needs to be a direct line of contact or else people are just left hanging, either having to struggle to get information, or follow their gut and hope to dear god they haven’t made a mistake.

There isn’t enough notification. Yes we get our W-2’s or 1099-MISC’s or whatever else in the mail and we know we have to do something. But the instructions aren’t very accessible, and by this I mean easily understood. What if we think there’s something wrong with what we received? Without a direct line of contact, how do we find the answer?

Also, filing taxes is way more complicated than it should be. Why is it so complicated when it could just be “This is who I am, this is how much I earned at this job, from this employer.” Boom, what else is there? Oh right, we have to do the math ourselves, figure out how to report the income in just the right way ourselves. And then, no matter how sure we are that we did things correctly, we still have to hope to dear god that nothing comes back to bite us. There is so much pressure to do things in precisely the right way, what happens when we make honest mistakes? I sure as hell hope that if I made a mistake, the fact that I am a first time filer is taken into account. Even if I wasn’t, I wouldn’t have filled things out the way I did if I didn’t think it was right. How the hell am I supposed to know if I did something wrong when, as I said before, there isn’t enough damn information. And yes I know that there are indeed dishonest people out there, but with all this technology and internet out there, you’d think there would be much easier ways to report income, pay taxes and get your refunds that don’t involve so much fear that you could have done something wrong. Our government system needs some serious revising in so many ways, this doesn’t even cover the icing on the cake. There are so many easier and simpler ways of doing things, but as I said bureaucracy at work. I got the email that the IRS has accepted my tax return. Here’s hoping…